Its a spinoff of a spinoff.
Covidien, a health care company carved out from Tyco International in 2007, plans to turn its pharmaceuticals unit into a stand-alone public company, as it looks to increase shareholder value.
Spinning off from its parent would give the new company the financial and strategic flexibility to pursue its growth plans, as well as allowing it to bring new products to market, Covidien in a statement.
“We’ve evaluated whether to separate these businesses for several years, due to the major differences between the medical products and pharmaceutical industries,” José E. Almeida, the chief executive of Covidien, said in the statement. We believe that now is the right time to do so because we have significantly improved the operations, performance and pipeline of our pharmaceuticals business
The move comes after Covidien attempted to sell the pharmaceutical unit to another health care company this year. Those
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Gold has risen nearly 1% in most currencies today after a dropping 3.5% in US dollar terms yesterday. The sell off yesterday has been attributed to more speculative players and funds selling off holdings before year end and going to cash due to alarming funding and liquidity pressures and increasingly elevated counter party risk.
The MF Global and re-hypothecation scandal and concerns regarding a bout of vicious deleveraging likely exacerbated the sell offs in gold and silver.
Traders, hedge funds, proprietary desks of banks and more speculative players many of whom are driven by technicals and momentum, rather than fundamentals, have been selling gold and going to cash due to the real risk of a monetary and systemic crisis.
Fears grew about the worsening euro zone debt crisis grew after Italian bond yields hit a new high which led to selling of commodities, equities and gold.
European banks facing both liquidity and solvency issues may have again actively dumped gold into the market in a desperate attempt to get dollars.
The Financial Times reports that bankers said “that hedge funds and other investors had unleashed a wave of selling as they aimed to preserve profits – or minimise losses – ahead of the end of the year.”
Technical selling was exacerbated by significant stop loss orders being triggered at key technical levels such as the 150 and 200-day moving average.
Gold’s fundamentals have not changed however the technicals are very poor.
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The U.S. media and market analysts have been focusing so much attention on the Eurozone debt crisis that similar problems brewing at home in domestic credit markets are not getting any attention, say some critics. Now that the presidential election is in full swing, many argue that the growing U.S. debt debacle will go unattended as politicians focus all their time and energy on staying in or getting into office. With the Federal Reserves latest announcement that Treasury borrowing rates will remain at historical lows, it appears that policymakers are intent on letting the problem fester rather than making the tough decisions that represent sound fiscal sense. For more on this continue reading the following article from Tim Iacono.
Former Kansas governor Mark Parkinson appeared on CNBC yesterday and made the point that you dont hear too much anymore these days with European credit markets being such a mess that the U.S.
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The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released the results for 2011’s third quarter housing market data, and it appears home prices have further yet to fall before reaching bottom. The FHFA reports a seasonally adjusted 7.22% drop in prices from last year, while the Case-Schiller index puts the drop at 7.42%. Analysts at Freddie Mac note that home prices will likely fall further due to the large inventory of homes with delinquent mortgages, and the sentiment is strengthened by news that the house price-to-rent ratio suggests homes are not currently undervalued. That inventory is slowly dropping, however, and homebuilder confidence is rising, which offers a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dismal real estate market forecast. For more on this continue reading the following article from Global Property Guide. T Read more…
This blog post doesn’t really have anything to do with estate planning or probate, but I’ll put it here anyway. It’s a follow-up of sorts to the previous posting I’ve done regarding Oak Park’s ban on “for sale” signs:
April 12, 2008
April 30, 2006
May 23, 2005
Is anything new on this front? Not with respect to the “for sale” sign ban, really, but there was a recent development that seems related in my mind.
As you may know, Oak Park was a party in a court case called McDonald v. Chicago. That case involved the question of whether Chicago’s (and Oak Park’s) gun ordinance was unconstitutional. However, to get to that question, the courts had to determine whether the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applies to individual states (and cities and villages within individual states) via the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S.
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